You do bring up a good counterpoint to my position that she didn't know. One could argue that the comment is a retroactive one, essentially teasing Piro about fair play. But given that there's a lot of barbs and daggers in the conversation, I'm not sure she would tease.

English language in text is pretty gender-neutral, but there are hints, if you know what to look for, that help to establish your relation's gender. It probably is easier after one side uncovers herself as a girl, the male brain starts inserting these subtle hints. If not that, can any expert in japanese chime in, how hard is it to cover your real gender with gender-neutral words in .jp ? (there are languages that have less choice in certain everyday words, you can only choose male or female versions, there is no neutral one in places... not without being really awkward or immediately rising suspicion that the other end tries to cover something up)

Or as MB wrote in his articles, he was gearing up to actually visit her back then, and may have had some travel arrangements in place already... maybe shared a pic of a ticket?

I suspect, when she actually fully realized he was male, she went nuclear on their RL relation because (as Sareth wrote) (with my mod) she was then, (and according to MB, still IS these days), registered underage. She wanted to protect him... from being apprehended as groping an underage girl. With some luck his laptop could have been searched at the airport... chat logs and pics could have come out... Visiting a friend, you say, how old is she exactly? Follow me sir, you have the right to one phone call.

So, Why did she do that? Why did she save him that way? She could have used her own (repeated) death to bring him down, as she's done with other fools and bad players before. But she didn't want to. Did she love him so much she didn't this to happen to him ? I'd say so...

I suppose, with her repeatedly dying, she knew also, she will never actually reach the age where their RLR would be legal, like ever... she would be forever 15-16 on records, if she never advances past her birthday before dying again. Must have been a strong blow. Now she was again dying repeatedly, but with nobody to talk to, and no perspective of getting back to him to explain it, ever...

Really wondering, who from the unMod world actually plays Miho's character, in the Megatokyo universe...

For who would hate who by when, there's lots on the old forum archive including some confusion at the time about which character was really meant to be called out in the seemingly random offhand not serious sorts of philosophical ideas about how things "would be". Or even when the end was going to be by. Plans have changed over and over in the years since though, so even if it meant something back then it might not now. Probably doesn't now. Even if "everyone" does end up hating Piro, like Komugiko's opinion on his care of Pirogoeth, it might not be wise to consider that outcome a foregone conclusion, at least not based only on that information from years gone by. It's probably best chalked up to doubt and negativity from the early days contaminating things that should have been tossed in the bin long ago.

For the online/Endgames parts of it all, we could equate a number of things about it to out in the real. Many are likely similar, but in this case there's a Megatokyo-spun version to it. Not just in the sense of games with emotional stats, but ones that can be manipulated to perhaps even change what happens out of the game as well.

To begin with, we essentially know both Piro and Largo were deceiving/lying to themselves at least as much as to anyone else. In the cake shop, Piro doesn't remember a whole lot, and Largo displays a great deal of distaste about how he imagines it. Both are being utterly bogus. Piro has had drawings, which he looks at before he goes to the ASF to locate the "missing" Miho. With him there's also the logs and pictures on the laptop he isn't open or honest about. Not just the early 1200s with Kimiko, but the later 1200s with Miho - compare let the poor thing rest and not funny. For Largo, it was already at least hinted at in a number of things he remembers out loud, such as the story he finishes telling Erika in wounds from within. By the time we get to wasting lives, it's more than clear not just did Largo know everything, he had strong feelings about it all.

That's all fine and good of course, but while we know there was a lot of messed up trickery going on with whatever happened online and offline, we also know there's more going on than just that. Not just Largo's role in this apparent fight for control both inside and out of Endgames, as we saw in the story he told Erika. It's before that even, when Miho challenges him about it in small sips; his dismissal of her, that invokes much anger and retaliation. There wasn't only something going on with Piro there. They were both targets, as we heard as early as amusing little enigmas. While obviously they were willing participants for most of it (but not, in the later game, fully in control of their actions) both had resolutions they didn't like.

That seems to all fit into an unanswered question that likely becomes even more meaningful when we consider that Miho is the real thing, or as an Analogue, or as some source of stories. Why was she in Endgames in the first place? Or even, was there more to why she started interacting with both Piro and Largo, rather than them being interesting, or that she was wasting time at the ASF between instances. How they felt about it all was real, and apparently painful enough to seriously repress. That almost might be explained by how after Ikebukuro most everyone fully forgot about Miho, within just a week of her not being around. Regardless, this is about more than just the social interactions of a few normal regular people who were messing around in mostly digital mostly text-based methods of communication.

Put into some perspective, Miho isn't some girl online. She has her own cult. She's older than she looks, perhaps decades, even centuries old. She's apparently able to blend into cultures, and is demonstrably fully fluent with at least two languages. There are some divisions of the authorities tasked with helping or protecting her, and others with contingency plans to destroy her. Sometimes she's sickly, other times she's crushing cars with her fingers, or leaping alone or with passengers out of the way of shotgun blasts and killball blasts, or tearing hospitals apart post-surgery. In player one wins she calls off a zombie rampage. She has the ability to, as a mere side-effect, turn distributed emotions into a local physical force bent on consuming her as we see with The Horde. Apparently she (or advanced androids that become imbued with aspects of her) can bend spacetime, like in (gapping errors). To perhaps cause, seemingly without trying, powerful ex-Idols act in ways that match the story but also not, like Erika in permission/anything you'd like to share. This isn't some normal person anyone is dealing with, now or in the past. And these effects are prevalent and long reaching even when she's not around.

Why Piro might be hesitant about what's going on right now, seems a far larger set of questions of broader scope, not only one question about the only right now. And no matter how much much of it might be like out here, there are a number of special factors that only exist in there. The lessons might not be exactly comparable or applicable, no matter how close they may seem on the surface.

I thought of starting a new thread but the thought I just had, goes back to [1346], [1350], [1351], [1352], [1353], and seems to align with what @iffy said above; knowing what we know now in [1503] and forth.
So in the conversation with Komugiko, in the bath house backroom, Miho is quite shocked to hear about the Little Polygon Bump. I think originally she thought to just get away to face her own fate alone again, and leave Piro, Komugiko and Yuki to make sure Kobayashi is tended to. Upon hearing of the LPB, you can see she changes her mind - impulse anger gets the better of her, wants to play out the Creepy Gaijin scenario instead, that could mean they would get away, but Piro would have to be actually on the run from authorities from now on, and could, at the least damaging outcome, be apprehended and sent back to the 'States with a one-way ticket. Then it looks like she changes her mind *again*, after loosing control of the creepy-gaijn story path, as it seems Piro is not willing to align to that, for whatever reason - gut feeling maybe, or at least he acts genuine enough in the art room to convince her, and his choices (like just the right moment to insert some adult-rated jealous 'I care about how you play with others' hint) make her anger disappear, and she starts to feel sorry for this attempt to pwn him that way. As she abandons the creepy-gaijin path, this choice leaves her without an exit strategy. This leads to her believing that Piro has been caught and lost in the horror, not knowing that Yuki pushed him through the 'I hate you' scenario...
So Miho may be the old force. She may be centuries old. She has the experiences and skills accumulated over the years. But she is also still quite controlled by her actual mental age of her brain. She is still acting on impulses like a 16 years old (same kind of impulses Yuki acts on). This however, kinda ruins her story this time...
Remeber, Piro only had an opportunity to talk to Miho for a brief moment after she woke up, and that conversation left him shellshocked again, trying to tell himself, that it's must be an after-effect of surgery, but not sure what scenario he is now in. He did not have the chance to talk with her before she was ninja-edited out of this story path.
He also has glass in his back, is still covered in dust, and Kimiko is battered, bruised from the fall, dusty and has toner in her hair. Hopefully he'll step carefully.

Those conversations at the end of the bathhouse/before The Horde fully forms in the school between 1346-1353 lead to many ideas about a great number of things, but seemingly like most everything Miho says and does, none of it quite clear enough to make informed conclusions that have some sense of solid logic to them. They lack finalization we could say. Answers that aren't even quite tentative, always waiting to confirm this and that but only getting more data that can be perceived a number of ways. Bits and pieces and is often contradictory or ill fitting in that it knocks out some other conclusion(s) as being likely.

For example, her conversation with Piro in the bathhouse early on has a sense of stalling, in that we learn much of nothing specific or that just fills in the same vagueness that was covered before in the apartment and the store before they left. She doesn't want what she is, which is some sacrifice but also that which creates the situation that is to be concluded. She has to provide the emotional finalization of stories that she's responsible for. Yet this all now isn't happening in a story to characters beyond the meta part of it, it's happening in Megatokyo to the participants. Which stories, to whom, when, what is she, why do things work like... however they work? There's nothing but vagueness to answer them, they're undetailed. That's what she explains. Then she decides it's time to leave (why now, to where, for what) -- just in time to find the damaged Yutaka. And thus also find the Yuki who provides a way for Miho to not be the one that voices the answer for getting out of this story dead-end, although it doesn't really do that. Yuki says call the adherents at the CoE. The "cheating players" who are quite well able to follow Miho and Piro, and indeed who continue to do so.

Perhaps Miho's lack of any definitive direct solid answers with any level of detail is because she's acting like the teen she's acting like. The problem with giving Miho the mind of her characters stems from what we can gather about her. Not from things that are what she has said, either directly or via others who got what they say from her. What we can gather from elsewhere and indirectly. As far as we know, Ed, Dom and Ibara are getting their info from above. Although of course that info might ultimately derive from her as well, since she might be part of the above also (she calls off the zombie rampage at Ikebukuro, ignores Masamichi as police inspector, and might have been the cause of Piro's low bail and her own ninja-backup extermination order as far as anyone knows). But Ibara calls her the same thing Ed did, the real thing. Ibara also puts it as the source of a powerful story (which might be a limit on his information and she's the sources of all stories or something equally grandiose). It's unclear if source and real thing are the same or different, which also goes for the last, Analogue. It seems they'd all be the same in a way; Analogue as origin, the real thing as not a derivative, and source(s) as a bit of both. Analogue Support Facility, the interrogator only aware of the representations. Things like Miho asking Yuki about being back there (1249) or telling Kimiko about players stumbling along (1406). A whole lot of the threads working their way through what she says to Piro between calm awakening (1274) and the end to a more and more heart-stopping day (1408). And she says and does a lot in that time, no matter how little actual substance is there.

A number of situations in the past seem to be mixed up as to cause and effect. We believe a number of things are planned, then things happen that suggest failure. She somehow knows what happened to Erika and Largo, knows what state Largo is in, then drags Piro and Largo to the radio show listening at the CoE. Then she fails at having Ping seduce Piro, and gets caught trying to psychically manipulate Largo -- yet that sets up the fine next day at Megagamers to put a whole lot of other things in motion. Was the day before a failure, or the desired outcome to lead to the next day and what happens with Yuki and Masamichi and Piro and Erika etc? Was the day before simply a set of circumstances that turned out a certain way that led to improvisation the next day based on the previous? Neither, both; we don't know. Do Piro's actions at the school make her jettison a 'Ping has absorbed my powers' storyline, or were things working exactly the way she wanted them the entire time, or was she just wildly guessing at why things weren't working like she expected them to. Was it Ping that changed things, or Miho, or Piro, or nobody. Likewise, was her huffing getting worse through chapter 11 and then the "Kotone story" a way to kick off her kicking off, or was that timed for Piro to show up and rescue her. Is the aberration the not dying, or the being saved, or would it have worked out about the same either way? Perhaps even recently with Junpei's (grand)mother, the reason she's not convincing in her cover is that she's not supposed to be. Irish goddess, or just speaking Gaelic because that's part of the role, the act. It could also be a scared Miho, wanting to hide but not wanting to be inactive, who has lost most of her most important powers, leaving her mostly at the mercy of a ninja assassin at the not quite as safe as it could be house. We might as well ask if Kimiko has absorbed the same amount of Miho's energy and power as Ping has. We don't know if that's possible, if there's even anything to absorb, or if it's all not quite true to begin with.

What is an Analogue (assuming everyone that calls her that and similar is anywhere near correct) anyway. What is and does, and why. Such as, Miho's goal right now, is? No goal per se, simply to survive? One or more of to escape her fate, to couple everyone up and leave, to die, to get back with Piro somehow, to get rid of Piro forever somehow, to get Sight back on track, to put Endgames back in good working order. All, none, some mix. Take a guess, take your pick. We don't know, and until something happens, any idea is just as right as it is wrong. The selection choices are very large, from in story or not, and quite a few are supported somehow in some perceptive way of subjectivizing them.

It would appear for the time being that whatever an Analogue is, given certain events and behaviors in story, they might be so real they themselves don't even know what is story and what is not. That manifesting in the outside world (if it's not where they normally operate to begin with) leads to stories they've created but don't control, where they are such great actors and/or actresses that even they fully immerse within the portrayal, simultaneously being the character and the audience with no way to separate or tell the difference. Both antagonist and protagonist, subject to the forces of chaos and order equally, with what sort of free will or total subjugation to the plot and events. Of course, many other times Miho appears to be fully aware (at some point for some length of time) to ponder, or plan, or plot, or philosophize. To make predictions she then breaks, or ask unanswerable questions she might be answering for herself that we are unaware of. But perhaps it just appears that way, and she's as lost and random as anyone else. Until something gets established, we might as well just consider it all a trick and a lie, if no answer exists until an answer is created.

I am beginning to see, what Miho meant by "it's what they are doing with it! they are assembling me! the real me! " hey look - and we are all doing it... all of us who are commenting /speculating about Miho ... it suddenly creeps me out almost... but hey we're really doing it- look at it from that angle - we are trying to piece the story together, exactly like the fan horde does. Does it mean if we overdo it, the story may not hold our weight and die ?...

Japanese tends to leave it rather vague from my impression. Something about not requiring pronouns, so you have to use context to identify who you are talking about. Most extreme case I can recall was from Maison Ikkoku where a love interest was telling a character that his dog had impregnated her dog, and he thought she was telling him he had impregnated her (since he was drunk earlier and couldn't remember what they did together.) Under this misunderstanding he proposed marriage, and thus was his love triangle resolved.

Additionally, while Japanese uses genderized self-pronouns instead of "I" these are not hard rules, since a tomboyish girl might use a male pronoun, and a very polite formal man might use a female pronoun. And I think there are also some gender neutral pronouns as well.

I am beginning to see, what Miho meant by "it's what they are doing with it! they are assembling me! the real me! " hey look - and we are all doing it... all of us who are commenting /speculating about Miho ... it suddenly creeps me out almost... but hey we're really doing it- look at it from that angle - we are trying to piece the story together, exactly like the fan horde does. Does it mean if we overdo it, the story may not hold our weight and die ?...

There's meta layered on meta all over the place, aye. Think of Ibara's perceptions in what he tells Junko at the CoE, that Yuki overhears much of. Junko (who had been a target of Miho's and is also fairly experienced with the weightier parts of life from economics and her age and family and role at school) and Yuki (who hasn't apparently interacted with Miho like Junko has, has a particular agenda, and is fairly inexperienced with much) got very different ideas and action plans from the same information. Yet whatever of what Ibara said that's on the mark about how things are in MT, he's also describing outside the wall. Some readers of Megatokyo just go for the feels and come up with answers that fit their feels or ignore that there might be answers. Other readers want to know the details, they look for meaning, and depending on what they're looking for or thinking about what they find, it all further guides their conclusions. Yet not much of it is established to know, so even trying to figure it out unemotionally has to have perception and emotion and subjectivity attached to it. We could say Junko wonders about the truth to fill in what she doesn't know, Yuki wants to get a better idea of the feelings to fix things. Then that rather makes some of us Junko and some of us Yuki.

Examples abound in story of unanswered questions that likely are unimportant (to feel) but might be critical (to understand). Why was Miho running interference for Yuki (815) or why has Miho apparently been switching between mentoring and manipulating and being mean to Yuki, what went on with Meimi back in the day and was it anything like now, who set Piro's bail low why and was it Junpei who left it, why was Miho in Endgames and what if anything was she trying to specifically accomplish there, what was Miho's point in the bath house and why did Piro's conscience give up and vanish. To those who feel, the bath house could be many things, for those who wonder, also many but mostly different. An exercise might be to list the 10 things Miho explained and described that were new (or provided in a better way than before) at the bath house, such as in everything she does with and says to Piro from Seemingly random unrelated scenarios to better fans. Those who feel might refuse to participate if they even entertain the idea, those who wonder might all come up with mostly different answers. A third group might scoff at the idea there's more than 0 things for the list. That there was much anything brand new or more fully explained to the point of being meaningful is another subjective value perception of its own too though.

For putting Miho together, she alleges she's back stage, behind the scenes, not a character herself, not anything out in the actual Megatokyo. Which certainly we've only seen her out in the actual Megatokyo. There's been a number of stories, some perhaps about her representations (what they're called in 1271) but mostly about what she is in and around Endgames (from her comments, and the stories both Largo and Piro tell Erika and Kimiko, and the drawings we have seen as the explanations go on) and "the actual Kotone" she tells Kimiko. We might could put in what she tells Piro at the apartment and bath house and school, but those aren't about representations are they. Yet either way, The Horde, these troubles and magical-fantasy phantasms (the fans of the representations, of her derivatives) she later explains are drawn towards incongruity and artifice. Those who start seeing aspects of the truth in the actors, authors, production that create the illusion to feel. Metaphysically The Horde tries to find the gold inside the goose. It wants what makes the characters live, but as we've seen with Kimiko and even more so with Erika, those portraying the roles are only other people, but who can make the characters more real and compelling than the script and plot could. Because they put some of their own selves into it all, and make the experience more like what the original is, for those experiencing it. At the same time, the portrayers themselves have nothing inside themselves directly of those characters, yet the characters become more alive because of the other things put in that weren't there when the characters were created, dry and lifeless. It doesn't apparently matter if what is being added is anything like the original in actuality.

Trying to recreate the sources is doomed to failure because it misses the idea, or at least that's supposedly why something like Ping can't work. And yet we don't know that Ping hasn't, or that what Miho is supposedly explaining isn't anything but itself merely illusion.